I found switching to OSS4 works great with superb sound quality. But VLC 1.1.9 has only Mono and Stereo sound outputs, and no 5.1 surround sound output options when playing DVD wit 5.1 surround sound.

I get 5.1 sound using mplayer, so OSS4 is not the issue. But I would like to get 5.1 surround in VLC as DVDs and music play best in VLC.Is there anything extra I have to do to get 5.1 surround in VLC with OSS4 (tweaking oss.c file in modules/audio_output folder). Any suggessions will be appreciated.I am pasting below the contents of oss.c code and the output of ossinfo, osstest for information.

oss.c

/***************************************************************************** * oss.c : OSS /dev/dsp module for vlc ***************************************************************************** * Copyright (C) 2000-2002 the VideoLAN team * $Id: 14d91ca1c0efa9a3d196006d4bea70f2742708fe $ * * Authors: Michel Kaempf <maxx@via.ecp.fr> * Sam Hocevar <sam@zoy.org> * Christophe Massiot <massiot@via.ecp.fr> * * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or * (at your option) any later version. * * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the * GNU General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software * Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston MA 02110-1301, USA. *****************************************************************************/

I get 5.1 sound using mplayer, so OSS4 is not the issue. But I would like to get 5.1 surround in VLC as DVDs and music play best in VLC.Is there anything extra I have to do to get 5.1 surround in VLC with OSS4 (tweaking oss.c file in modules folder). Any help will be appreciated.

I'm not too familiar with vlc, but oss.c looks mostly fine...A) Is the "#ifdef SNDCTL_DSP_GETCHANNELMASK" part compiled in? It's possible the machine vlc was compiled on was faulty and somehow the ifdef wasn't defined? Run 'strace -ff -e trace=ioctl vlc (etc.)' and try to check if it actually sends these ioctls.B) You can try testing what SNDCTL_DSP_GETCHANNELMASK returns. e.g.

Thanks for your response. As suggested, I have run the following command in terminal 'strace -ff -e trace=ioctl ./vlc' with the following partial output. I am not sure if oss.c code has been properly compiled in vlc.